>>1510
step 1 legal written permission from the copyright holder. This might be the composer, or a label they are signed to. If the composer is deceased, someone still holds those rights.
there are several kinds of rights required--
Composition rights, that is legal rights to use the musical composition, which includes melody and lyrics
Audio Rights, That is the legal right to use the recording of the composition. This is only required if you sample, however this is required for even the shortest samples. people have been taken to court over millisecond long samples.
Performance rights, This is the right to perform said work, or include a portion of said work into a derivitive work, for live performance. Again, this right is only required for live performances.
Sale and Distribution rights require the above. If you're releasing a track for free as a derivative work, so long as your final product is demonstrably different from the source material, it can be released for free (no profits for any party) under fair use. This fair use is what allows remixes to exist, and is how some artists get their start (mixtapes / demos / bootlegs). The reason that places like youtube and even soundcloud do not allow for sampling in music (content ID, etc) is because even if you do not profit from the sample, they (youtube, soundcloud, etc) do, in the form of ad revenue, and native advertising, meaning that even if you do not profit from the song, they are profiting from the existence of the song indirectly, however they are not in control of what gets uploaded and therefor the fault falls on the uploader, and not the service. It's only an issue though in the case of content ID, because otherwise it goes unnoticed, which is why there's so many mashups/remixes/bootlegs on soundcloud, despite being a violation of the TOS. Soundcloud doesn't have a content ID system. yet.
As for that song and source that you reference, That's a pretty obscure one. Explain this.
Nikki minaj - anaconda ; sampled: Sir Mix A Lot - Baby Got Back
As for the TECHNICAL how it was done, that's step 2.
acquire a multi-track recording. That is the individual recordings of vocals / drums / other instruments as separate tracks. These are used for mixing and mastery to create the original song. Often these are held as backups by lables for in the event that a released mix is lost/damaged, for the creation of new mixes, and for the purpose of future remixing and licensing. why lock something away when you can make more money off of it.
you can buy the master tracks of songs for private use, for performance, and for the production and sale of derivative works, however it is quite expensive. I mean hundreds if not thousands, per song, typically at a flat rate.
you could not make an album like 'the fat of the land' today. AT LEAST NOT IN THE UNITED STATES.
Other countries in europe have different copyright law than the united states. Most of the same still applies, but copyright extensions are not as severe. or at least they hadn't been until recently. This is how artists like Daft Punk where able to exist when they did, despite strict american copyright law. american copyright law was forced to respect french copyright law.
However, thanks to things like the TPP, American copyright law is now going to be forced onto other nations that agree to it, and pretty much the entire EU is agreeing to be in it, which means life + 120 years after death. that's how long until content enters public domain. which means things like "discovery" will become prohibitively expensive to produce.
But the rich can still sample so everything looks fine to them and the politicians (who are also rich).
We need copyright reform.
As for house music sampling?
Most don't do direct sampling. Most pay random singers to re-record A Capella for them, and they get JUST the composition rights, which you can get for super cheap compared to recording rights.
Which means they fall in 3 camps
Rich asshole made it and bought the sample
Someone spent money to get the rights and re-recorded the samples
It's technically illegal, and they just haven't been busted because the copyright holders haven't gone after them or haven't noticed. or in the case of the winstons, they just don't care.